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Getting Mouthy - intro
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My little girl was not particularly keen on brushing her teeth. Don't get me wrong, we made certain that the deed is done morning and night, but it was the bare minimum and was done with little love and care. We spoke to the dentist about electric toothbrushes, simply because we have found that they have given us a better clean as adults, and he suggested the battery operated toothbrushes rather than the mains charged versions.

My wife kept her eye out for a while and found the Colgate Barbie battery operated toothbrush in a bargain shop for £1. This is as cheap as some of the manually operated versions and came with batteries included, of the AAA version.

Of course my daughter was excited when she saw it and has been keen to clean since and it has saved us the job of going over them again just to make sure.

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Fangs very much - description
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The toothbrush itself has a larger handle area than a non-electric version where the batteries and the mechanics sit. The head is a double; a circle which vibrates and a semi circle beneath, each with blue inner bristles and white outer.

The bulk of the body is purple with a picture of Barbie sitting on a sofa taking off her shoe. Naturally Barbie has a beautiful set of white gnashers. After all it would be odd to put a picture on where she has a badly cleaned, yellowing set. I'm not entirely convinced Barbie is great for my daughter's body image, so I keep telling her as she brushes that she doesn't need to look like that. I think she's getting a bit fed up with me now. I think there may be variations in the design, Barbie does other exciting things besides take off her shoes. Sometimes she's combing her hair, others she's just smiling; that's hard work.

To replace the batteries, as we have done three times now, the base needs to be unscrewed with a particularly small headed screwdriver. This may be an added complication in some households.

There are two separate on/off buttons towards the top of the handle. What I mean is that there is an 'off' button and an 'on' button. Hmm, I'm beginning to wonder if Barbie is sharper than I am?

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Say Tartar to bedtime battles - evaluation
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So, we now have more enthusiasm for the brushing but I'm convinced that, in general, my daughter has cleaner teeth. We have just had an issue with a wobbly tooth where the surrounding teeth turned yellow because it hurt to clean. But that would have happened with any toothbrush, so I can't blame Barbie for that.

I have always been surprised at how long these toothbrushes last. It's much longer than any other toothbrush we've owned. And it isn't battery hungry either. There has been a slight issue with the batteries not quite connecting of late and the model needing a bump on the bottom to get it going. But I would say its got at least another six months wear left. We have tried other brands of this type of toothbrush but they tend not to last as long.

Quite simply, it does the job in our household and there will be no going back to the old style brushes except perhaps when we go away on holiday.